Hypocrisy in action at Hungarian Embassy in DC on Thursday

Minister of Human Resources Zoltán Balog will be in Washington, D.C. this Thursday for the opening of two exhibitions hosted by the Hungarian Embassy: “Cross-in-Fire — Persecution of Christians in the Middle East” and “From the Roma Holocaust to the 1956 Revolution”.

The invitation describes the exhibitions as follows:

Cross-in-Fire — Persecution of Christians in the Middle East — “In the cradle of Christianity, survival of Christian communities of two thousand years is now endangered. The Cross-in-Fire exhibition focuses on the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, exploring causes and outlining consequences.”

From the Roma Holocaust to the 1956 Revolution — “The exhibition on the Roma community commemorates the Roma Holocaust (Pharrajimos) and explains the role of the Roma community in 20th Century Hungary, including in the 1956 Revolution and Freedom Fight.”

Voting rights of Hungary’s Roma community

What about the voting rights of Hungary’s Roma community? Per the OSCE’s monitoring of Hungary’s 2014 general election: the election was free but not fair. In addition to a multitude of problems the OSCE found, one very significant issue concerned the voting rights of Hungary’s Roma.

“Affirmative measures in favour of minority voters gave them the opportunity to register for a separate minority voting process. By having to publicly register, and given that only one choice was available on the ballot for minority lists, their choice was limited and secrecy of the vote was violated. As well, the measures did not appear to enhance their participation or visibility in the process,” the OSCE wrote.

Use the exhibit opening to ask questions!

The Hungarian government has done much to deflect its inhumane (and many would say un-Christian) treatment of asylum-seekers. One such mechanism for deflection is to simply change the subject to Christians in the Middle East and how they are the real victims of violent extremism.

The government claims the refugee crisis must be solved at its place of origin, that is, in the countries they are fleeing, the notion being that refugees and asylum-seekers ought to return home and tough it out until things get better.

The Hungarian public is being bombarded with sentiments such as these against a backdrop of xenophobic propaganda that portrays the refugee crisis as a sinister attempt engineered and financed by George Soros and his minions to import millions of Muslim “terrorists” into Europe, allegedly for the purpose of undermining national sovereignty and destroying Europe’s Christian heritage.

With respect to Hungary’s Roma, it is important to note the anti-Roma sentiments promulgated by Hungary’s so-called center-right government which, judging from its rhetoric and behavior of late, has come more and more to resemble that of an extreme right-wing party. In 2015, seeking to justify his government’s decision not to provided refuge to asylum-seekers, the prime minister stated that Hungary would never seek to impose the country’s 700,000 Roma on other European countries.